Building a Better Mental Ecosystem: Thoughts

A while back on Facebook, I wrote about nurturing my mental ecosystem. An ecosystem, as you know, is a system of interacting elements working together as one unit. If one of the elements is out of balance, the system suffers.

Take, for example, a garden. If you want a ton of vegetables, you need the right combination of water, soil and light. You need plant food. You need to weed to keep the plants from getting choked. You need a fence to keep the groundhog from munching the green beans straight from the stalk. Care for your little plot of land and it will thrive. Ignore, and you’ll get a bunch of withered half-eaten green beans plants.

Or your body. That’s another obvious one. Exercise and eat right and your body is your friend. Spend too much time eating Buffalo wings and cheesecake, and it’ll break down. (Looking at you, Captain Pete.)

Lately I’ve been giving more and more thought to my mental ecosystem. Our spirit –-our essence if you will — is the result of everything that flows in and out of our world. Our health, our spirituality, our friends and family, our career, the world at large, all play a role in our we feel about our lives. They are responsible for whether we wake up feeling happy and fulfilled or sad and miserable.

Oftentimes, however, we neglect one area or another. We allow negativity and misery to seep in. As a result, we become a negative drain in someone else’s ecosystem.

Therefore, for the rest of 2017 I’m going to be taking a good long look at the various parts of my mental ecosystem and determine what I can do to create the most positive, nurturing ecosystem possible. My hope — to beat my garden analogy to death — is to start 2018 with fresh rich soil ready to grow.